I am a scientist. It can be a really frustrating job sometimes, but there is no better feeling than having an idea, translate it into a hypothesis and verify then in the lab that you actually got it totally……wrong! Sometimes I believe that to forge brave and determined man one should send the kids to do some lab work and not the military camps! Anyway, even though you get it wrong most of the time, in the end, you usually get it right and you manage to understand something about nature.
I am a microbiologist. I work with bacteria (mainly). You can do all sorts of things with them. In general, you can test your ideas in a few days or maybe weeks. And based on the results of the first experiments you can plan more. Then, putting all the little pieces together you will slowly (and painfully) get a picture that teaches you and the rest of the community (I wish I could say humanity) something about you cute little friends!
There are scientists that cannot do experiments, intended as empirical tests to answer questions. For example, paleontologists would have a hard time to bring back to life a dinosaur and verify whether the way they reconstructed its motility is really accurate. Well, unless you are Henry Wu and you live in the Jurassic Park movies!
Similarly, a climate scientist has a hard time to take a small piece of the world (including both land and oceans), insulating it completely from the surrounding environment and pump in it a lot of different amounts of greenhouse gasses and verify what will happen in that system.
Paleontologists and climate scientists are unfortunately not as lucky as I am, and cannot directly verify in the lab their theories and hypothesis the same way I do. However, they use other tools, they look at data recorded from rocks, glaciers, and sediments, and they read the information in them. They can understand then how the earth was thousands and millions of years ago. They can use virtual or similar systems to simulate their data and to verify whether their reconstructions of the past and future (in the case of the climate scientist) are more or less accurate. However, these approaches do not need to sound unrealistic or less trustworthy than my small flasks with bacteria inside. Let’s be clear here, they have hard data, meaning real objective observation of nature: fossils, isotopes in sediments/ice, measure of greenhouse emissions. From this, they develop theories and propose phenomena: evolution and climate change. So the point is, that these guys are quite cool, as they are able to understand global phenomena that drive our earth and shape(d) our existences and formulate general natural rules. But, these are based on FACTS! Fossils are facts, greenhouse emissions by humankind is a fact!
The above facts are telling us that we are basically almost totally screwed. Yes, I am also one of those freaks that are trying to tell you that people and scientists that talk about climate change are actually basing their claims on FACTS! Climate change is real, and I wish (and maybe many climate scientists as well) there could be one final and resolutive experiment to prove that. Unfortunately, you cannot squeeze the earth in a laboratory flask and change things for a few days and measure the effect of climate change. Nevertheless, there is such an impressive amount of literature, based on recording data from sediments and glaciers, based on modeling past temperature trends and greenhouse concentrations that clearly show how the increase in gas emission and temperature we have been observing in few decades is completely unnatural and we have to be blamed for this (for example see the figure below taken from the NOAA web site).
“Comparisons of simulated and reconstructed Northern Hemisphere temperature changes. Simulations are shown by colored lines, thick lines showing the mean of multiple model simulations (using, e.g., models such as ECHAM and CSIRO) and thin lines showing the 90% confidence range of this mean. Red lines show models forced by stronger solar variability and blue lines show models forced by weaker solar variability. Reconstructed temperatures are shown by grey shading. All data are expressed as anomalies from their 1500–1850 mean and smoothed with a 30-year filter. Graphic from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report.”
The point is that nature doesn’t really care about us. We can destroy everything we have around, and cause the VI mass extinction and get extinct ourselves, but nature will find a new equilibrium and new species will arise (maybe she will actually be happy to do not have us around anymore!). Nature has been doing this for billions of years, so “she” knows the trick (nature has to be a woman, as all cool things are female…sob)! Well, if you do not believe me look at the catastrophe that happened in the Ukraine city of Chernobyl. In this city, in 1986 a reactor of a nuclear power plant exploded. It was a mess, the level of ionizing radiation was over the roof. Workers died on the spot, and several neighbor cities needed to be evacuated. Till now Chernobyl had been a ghost city, no one lives there. And yet, nature went back, and now Chernobyl is ruled by animals and plants!
So, my dear friend, I am sorry to tell you that nature couldn’t care less about you or me. Deal with it! On the other hand, we are screwed if the natural equilibria as they are now change. We might face water shortage, more extreme climatic events, a drastic reduction in our food supply (e.g. decrease in productivity, or extinction of species we use to eat). Moreover, climate change can affect the most sensitive of ecosystems like coral reefs, which play a crucial role in ocean health and productivity. We can only imagine what the extinction of these ecosystems would mean, but for sure this can have a drastic impact on the equilibria in the ocean and can result in a drastic reduction in e.g. fish production.
Just in case you did not get it, Nature (now even with a capital letter) does not care. A new equilibrium will be found and new ecosystems will arise. However, I am afraid she (Nature is still a girl) will for sure not ask us what we will prefer.
I guess, to conclude this long post, I simply would like to tell you one thing: be egoistic! Think about you, and your children and your family. Do something to guarantee them a future, to guarantee them food, and a happy and healthy life. Travel less with planes, eat less meat, produce less plastic, take the bike to work, share the car trip with colleagues, switch off the lights, re-use and recycle. In other words: Be egoistic, save the planet!!
Open Brain Surgery 